CHAP. son, without any such testimonials, began, on the morning of IV. the 11th of April, his ill-omened journey. Savary, affecting 1808. the most assiduous attention, solicited the honour of accompanyApril. ing him;.. he had just, he said, received information of the Emperor's approach, and it was not possible that they should proceed farther than Burgos before they met him. They reached Burgos, and Buonaparte was not there, neither were there any tidings of his drawing near. Savary, who had followed the young King in a separate carriage, urged him to proceed to Vittoria. Ferdinand hesitated; but the same protestations and urgent entreaties on the part of the French envoy, and the same anxiety and secret fear which had induced him to come thus far, made him again consent; yet so reluctantly, that the Frenchman, on their arrival at Vittoria, thinking it would be useless to renew his solicitations, left him there, and continued his journey to Bayonne, there to arrange matters with his master for securing the prey, who was now already in the toils. At Vittoria, Ferdinand received intelligence that Buonaparte had reached Bourdeaux, and was on his way to Bayonne. In consequence of this advice, the Infante Don Carlos, who had been waiting at Tolosa, proceeded to the latter place, whither the Emperor had invited him: he reached that city some days before him; and when this modern Cæsar Borgia arrived there, he found one victim in his power. It is said that Don Carlos soon discovered the views of Buonaparte; and, having communicated his fears to one on whom he relied as a Spaniard, and a man of honour, drew up, with his advice, a letter to Ferdinand, beseeching him, as he valued the independence of his country and his personal safety, not to proceed to Bayonne ; but this person was in the tyrant's interest, and intercepted the messenger.

While Ferdinand, meantime, was chewing the cud of re

IV.

advice to Ferdinand at Vittoria.

flection at Vittoria, without those opiates of falsehood and flat- CHAP. tery which Savary had continually administered, D. Mariano Luis de Urquijo waited upon him: one of the persons who had 1808. suffered under Godoy's administration, and who had hitherto April. been regarded as one of the most enlightened Spaniards, and Urquijo's truest friends of his country. The new King had annulled the proceedings against him, and he now came to offer his homage and his thanks, and his advice in this critical position of affairs. He told the King's counsellors that Buonaparte certainly intended to extinguish the dynasty of the Spanish Bourbons; that the language of the Moniteur concerning the tumults at Aranjuez, the movement of his troops, the seizure of the fortresses, and the whole scheme of his policy, made this evident. Fearing and believing this, he asked them what they could propose to themselves from this journey? how they could suffer a king of Spain thus publicly to degrade himself by going towards a foreign state without any formal invitation, without any preparations, without any of the etiquette which ought in such cases to be observed, and without having been recognized as King, for the French studiously called him still Prince of Asturias? To these reasonable questions the poor perplexed ministers could only reply, that they should satisfy the ambition of the Emperor by some cessions of territory, and some commercial advantages. He made answer, that perhaps they might give him all Spain. The Duke del Infantado appeared to feel the force of Urquijo's remonstrances, but asked if it were possible that a hero like Napoleon could disgrace himself by such an action as this apprehended treachery. Urquijo answered, that both in ancient history and in their own they might find that great men had never scrupled at committing great crimes for great purposes, and posterity nevertheless accounted them heroes. The Duke observed, that all Europe, even France itself, would be shocked

April.

CHAP. at such an act; and that Spain, with the help of England, might IV. prove a formidable enemy. To this Urquijo replied, that Europe 1808. was too much exhausted to engage in new wars; and that the separate interests and ambitious views of the different powers prevailed with each of them more than a sense of the necessity of making great sacrifices in order to destroy the system which France had adopted since her fatal revolution. Austria was at this time the only power capable of opposing Buonaparte, if Spain should rise against him; but if Russia and Germany and the rest of Europe were on the opposite side, Austria would be vanquished; the Spanish navy would be destroyed, and Spain would become nothing more than a theatre of war for the English against the French; in which, moreover, the English would never expose themselves unless they had something to gain, for England was not capable of making head against France in a continental war: the end would be the desolation of Spain and its conquest. As little reason was there to rely upon any disgust which might be felt in France at the injustice of its Emperor. In France there was no other public spirit but what received its impulse from the government. The French would be flattered if their Emperor placed a member of his family on the throne of Spain; they would perceive in such a change great political and commercial advantages to themselves; and the numerous classes who had a deep interest in the revolution, all who had taken part in it, all who had grown up in its principles,.. the men of letters, the Jews, and the protestants, would regard with satisfaction an event which, by completing the destruction of the house of Bourbon, gave them a farther security against the dreaded possibility of its restoration in France. What then, he asked, was to be done? Nothing could be hoped from arming the nation; the internal state of Spain rendered it impossible to form a government capable of directing its force,

IV.

April.

and popular commotions must in their nature be of short dura- CHAP. tion: an attempt of this kind would produce ruinous consequences in the Americas, where the inhabitants would wish to 1808. throw off a heavy yoke, and where England would assist in just revenge for the imprudence with which Spain had promoted the insurrection in her colonies. He advised therefore, as the only means which offered any hope of extricating the new King from the danger which awaited him, that he should escape from the French, in whose hands he already was in fact a prisoner. This might be done at midnight, through the window of one of the adjoining houses; the Alcaide of the city would provide means for conducting him into Aragon. Meantime Urquijo offered to go to Bayonne as ambassador, and make the best terms he could with the Emperor: a business so ill begun, so ill directed, and in every way so inauspicious, could not end well; but it might be expected, that when Napoleon saw the King had escaped the snare, and was in a situation where he could act for himself, he would find it prudent to change his plans.

Ferdinand writes to

from Vit

toria.

These forcible representations were strengthened by D. Joseph Hervas, son of the Marquis de Almenara; he was the Buonaparte brother-in-law of General Duroc, and the intimate friend of Savary, with whom he had travelled from Paris. Through these connexions he had obtained, if not a certain knowledge of Buonaparte's intentions, such strong reasons for suspecting them, as amounted to little less; and he communicated his fears to Ferdinand's counsellors, and besought them, while it was yet possible, to save him from the snare. These warnings were in vain. But though Ferdinand's counsellors could not be made to apprehend the real danger, that poor Prince felt his first apprehensions return upon him with additional force; disappointed of seeing Buonaparte, disappointed of hearing from him, he compared this mortifying neglect with the conduct of Murat

IV.

1808.

April.

Apr. 14.

army

CHAP. and the ambassador, and as if to relieve his mind by complaining, wrote to the tyrant in a tone which confessed how entirely he was at his mercy. Elevated to the throne, he said, by the free and spontaneous abdication of his august father, he could not see without real regret that the Grand Duke of Berg and the French ambassador had not thought proper to felicitate him as King of Spain, though the representatives of other courts with which he had neither such intimate nor such dear relations, had hastened so to do. Unable to attribute this to any thing but the want of positive orders from his Imperial Majesty, he now represented with all the sincerity of his heart, that from the first moment of his reign he had never ceased to give the Emperor the most marked and unequivocal proofs of attachment to his person; that his first order had been to send back to the of Portugal the troops which had left it to approach Madrid; and his first care, notwithstanding the extreme penury of the finances, to supply the French troops, making room for them by withdrawing his own from the capital... He spoke of the letters he had written, the protestations he had made, the deputations he had sent. "To this simple statement of facts," said he, your Majesty will permit me to add an expression of the lively regret I feel in seeing myself deprived of any letters from you, particularly after the frank and loyal answer which I gave to the demand that General Savary came to make of me at Madrid in your Majesty's name. That general assured me that your Majesty only desired to know if my accession to the throne would make any change in our political relations. I answered by reiterating what I had already written, and willingly yielding to this general's intreaties that I should come to meet your Majesty to accelerate the satisfaction of being personally acquainted with you, I have in consequence come to my town of Vittoria, without regarding the cares indispensable from a new reign,

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